US Building Footprints

In 2019, Microsoft released a dataset containing over 125 million building footprints for the United States. An updated version of this dataset was released in 2022 and the files we’re sharing here are based on the 2022 update. It’s a fantastic resource but the original GeoJSON files tend to load very slowly in desktop GIS software. So, we’ve converted each state dataset to the GeoPackage file format, as well as adding a county code and county name column to each file. You can download the data by clicking on individual state names below. This version of the US buildings dataset was compiled by our associate Pankaj Parmar in February 2023 and we’re releasing it here again free of charge in the hope that users find it useful. Please see the bottom of the page for further information.

The data on this page was originally made available by Microsoft and is licenced under the Open Data Commons Open Database License (ODbL) which means that users are free to share, modify and use the data in a variety of ways, including commercial use.

We’ve changed the file format to GeoPackage and added some additional fields to the data in an attempt to make it easier to use. Each file has five fields, as follows: fid (this is a basic numeric identifier for each feature); release (this should always be either 1 or 2, to indicate which buildings have been updated in release 2); capture_dates_range (this is often blank, but if not it will contain the date range within which a building was captured); GEOID (this is the full FIPS code for the county each building is in – the first two numbers indicate the state and the last three numbers indicate the county); NAME (this is the name of the county a building is in).

In the current version of the data published by Microsoft, the data for each state often overlaps other state boundaries, so you can end up with a small number of buildings in surrounding states. In our version of the dataset you can easily filter these out by using the GEOID column – e.g. in QGIS if you use a Categorized symbology and enter left( “GEOID” ,2) in the Value box and then hit Classify the buildings will be coloured by their state FIPS code and you’ll see which buildings on state edges fall outside the state named in the file.

Note: in the original Alaska buildings file published by Microsoft we noticed that many parts of the state have no buildings. We are not sure why this is, but users should be aware that for some settlements in Alaska (e.g. Kodiak, Nome), no building footprints are available. All other states are, to the best of our knowledge, complete.